He didn't knock.
The door opened and Ricky walked in and closed it behind him—not a slam, which would have been easier to manage, but a controlled click that was somehow worse. The specific restraint of someone who had made a decision about how they were going to do this.
Aurora looked up from her screen.
She'd been expecting him since the second missed call. Had known, in the way she knew most things about Ricky, that silence after voicemail wasn't acceptance. It was transit.
He stood just inside the door. Still in his coat. His jaw was set and his eyes had the quality she'd rarely seen from him—not the open jealousy of before, not the careful management of someone choosing his words. Something rawer than both. Something that had been sitting in him since 7:03 AM and had spent the walk over becoming something he was no longer trying to contain.
"How long," he said.
Not a question. The punctuation was just a formality.
"Ricky—"
